After spending more than one year in prison, for ‘collusion against the [Iranian] government’ and ‘evangelism,’ Iranian pastor Rasoul Abdollahi has been released from prison.
Abdollahi, a leader in Iran's house church movement, was arrested Dec. 26 2010 and released last week, Feb. 16. His arrest ...

Is ISIS real Islam? Debate continues

Author Graeme Wood comes under attack for his recent article in The Atlantic, which argued that ISIS is "more than a collection of psychopaths," but a group with a clear set of [Islamic] beliefs.

In a new article in The Atlantic, Caner K. Dagli takes issue with Wood's implication that Muslims who reject ISIS as un-Islamic are being "hypocritical or naive," and that ISIS follow the texts of Islam as faithfully and seriously as anyone.

Dagli argues that ISIS justifies its actions by "cherry picking" from the Qur'an or the hadith (further texts about the life of the Prophet Muhammad), and that it makes no effort to fully understand the "complex and nuanced" texts.

Dagli concludes that articles like Wood's put Muslims in an impossible situation.

"In my experience," he says, "many Muslims are upset by articles like this not because their feelings are hurt, but because such arguments fill them with dread. They worry about what might happen to a religious or ethnic group that policymakers or the public believe to be intrinsically and uniquely dangerous.

"Muslims are presented with a brutal logic in which the only way to truly disassociate from ISIS and escape suspicion is to renounce Islam altogether."

Abandoned Syrian Christian leaders urge air strike

“There is a need for immediate action similar to what took place in Kobani,” Bassam Ishak, president of the Syriac National Council of Syria, told the American Catholic News Service, referring to air strikes that helped the Kurds successfully drive out extremists from the city on the border with Turkey.

Ishak's appeal was echoed by Hassaka's Catholic Arcbishop Jacques Hindo who expressed a sense of abandonment "into the hands of Daesh [the Arabic name for Islamic State]".

“We have 100 Assyrian families who have taken refuge in Hassaka, but they have received no assistance either from the Red Crescent or from Syrian government aid workers, perhaps because they are Christians," Hindo added.